The Drifters

  On July 8 the five-thirty serenade outside Bar Vasca consisted of three bass drums of overpowering intensity, thumped for thirty minutes on one extended fugue. The all-night drunks invited the drummers into the bar, from which the hideous hammering could be physically felt in one’s stomach, even on the third floor. We assembled downstairs, and since there was no reason to hurry this morning, had coffee in the bar, watching with admiration as the three drummers continued their exercise.

  ‘It’s sort of beautiful,’ Monica screamed over the noise.

  ‘It feels good in the gut,’ Yigal said. ‘Like a mortar going off, continuously.’

  At about six-thirty we walked slowly up the hill to the town hall, where we started to occupy perches on the barricades, but changed our plans when an attendant in uniform whispered, ‘Hssssst! The señoritas like a good spot?’ I nodded, and for a few pesetas he led us into a door of the town hall and up a flight of stairs to a balcony that commanded the entire portion of the run. ‘We like to please our pretty visitors,’ he said in Spanish, and Britta replied, ‘And we like to please our courteous friends,’ giving him a kiss. Touching his cheek, he responded, ‘Today shall be inscribed in the book of gold.’

  I explained that what we would see this day would be quite different, more classic in a way, more Spanish. ‘The bulls will be charging up the hill we just climbed, and when they reach this spot they must turn sharp left. They will cross directly beneath us, then dash straight down that lovely street called Doña Blanca de Navarra. Who she was I don’t know, but now she’s famous. At the end, the bulls turn right and enter the greatest of the streets, Estafeta, which we’ll see tomorrow.’

  Joe asked if we would see Harvey Holt from this spot, but I said, ‘No, he runs in a different place. The ones who run here love the openness, the thrill of seeing the bulls come up over that rise, the sudden twists and turns. I used to run here.’ Joe looked at me and said nothing.

  By quarter to seven the plaza was jammed, and Gretchen said, ‘So many people! You’d think there wouldn’t be any left over for the bullring. But I suppose it’s crowded too.’ When I nodded, she asked, ‘How many people see the bulls each morning?’ I had never tried to calculate, but I guessed, ‘A hundred thousand. Maybe more.’ And she said, ‘In this little town.’ She looked to her right at a church that must have been five hundred years old and at the plaza that had known Roman legionnaires. ‘Many ghosts run in these streets,’ she said, and I thought of those I myself had known in the middle years of this century who were no longer in the streets. They’d had a good run.

  At seven the first rocket went off, then promptly, the second. We held our breath, and after a proper interval, saw runners exploding from the street to our right, followed by those dark torpedo-like bodies. Here the bulls were fresher and ran with greater speed, so that the runners before them seemed to fly, and in an instant all was past and men who would never dare to face a bull were leaving the safety of the barricades and climbing into the street so that they could say, ‘I ran with the bulls at town hall.’

  Of course, there were bullfights each afternoon, but the less said about them the better. The fact that the bulls had pounded through the streets in the morning meant that in the afternoon they were tired and excited, which in turn meant that the fights were usually bad … and always rowdy.

  About an hour and a half before fight time, in various parts of the city, taurine clubs in traditional white trousers and distinctive cotton blazers would begin to assemble behind their individual bands, which contained few musicians but some of the greatest noisemakers in Spain. Members would arrive in pairs, two to a bucket loaded with ice and canned beer. Some would report with their buckets sloshing sangría, an excellent drink made of cheap red wine and fruit juice. In each club a special committee had the responsibility for making forty or fifty sandwiches consisting of huge slabs of cheese and ham slapped between crusty rolls a foot long and wrapped in foil.

  An hour before fight time these clubs, marching in wild fashion behind their bands and carrying banners proclaiming their identity, would begin to circulate through the city, each on its own route, and as they progressed they picked up casual followers who would dance along the streets, so that by the time the bands began to converge on the bullring, there would be hundreds of raucous followers behind each one.

  Inside the arena, the bands observed one rule: each must play as loudly as possible in its own tune in competition with all others, who played their own tunes unceasingly. The result was a cacophony which echoed back and forth across the arena like waves of sound from Krakatau in final explosion. In the interval between the third bull and the fourth, the sandwich committees stood on the top row of the arena and pitched their foil-wrapped rolls far into the air, so that they descended like submarines over the heads of the crowd. If you were lucky enough to catch one, you had lunch for three.

  Now drinks were passed, and the beer presented no problem, but the buckets of sangría were something else, because when only a quart or so remained in the bottom of the bucket, it was traditional to pour it over the heads of the crowd sitting below, and if a man came to San Fermín with only one good shirt, it was soon stained an attractive wine color. When the wine was used up, other liquids were thrown on the people below, and whenever the police caught men urinating in paper cups, they frowned.

  At the bullfights, Holt and I had good seats in the shade, across from where the bands played, so we escaped the rowdyism, but the young people sat in the sun and were surrounded by the wine throwers. Joe and Cato and the girls accepted the frenzy as a generic part of San Fermín and even struck up friendships with some of their neighbors—the rowdy element invariably whistled when the girls came down the aisles and threw bits of paper and bread at them—but Yigal grew increasingly irritated and voiced his complaints freely.

  This exasperated Holt, who asked at dinner on the fourth night, ‘If you don’t like bullfights, why bother with Pamplona?’

  Yigal, not wanting to get into another argument, said, ‘I’m mad because they throw all that wine on me, but never a sandwich.’

  This attempt at humor did not placate Holt, who asked, ‘Are you afraid of the bulls? Is that it?’

  ‘I’m disturbed by the ridiculous behavior of grown men who seek their thrills this way. That’s all.’

  ‘You mean us?’

  ‘It strikes me as silly … twenty thousand men in a ring, tormenting a defenseless calf whose horns have been padded.’

  ‘You ever been hit by one of those defenseless calves?’

  ‘Or running down Estafeta with six bulls on your tail. Who needs thrills like that?’

  ‘Have you ever been in danger … just for the hell of it?’

  I could have warned Holt that he was heading into the wrong alley with that question, but it had been asked, so all of us who knew Yigal’s record sat back with smiles on our lips. The young Jew preferred not to answer, so Holt, believing that he had struck the boy on a tender nerve, said, ‘You bookish fellows see things very clearly sometimes, but you often miss the main point.’

  ‘What is the main point?’ Yigal asked.

  ‘That the male animal, throughout history, has enjoyed testing himself.’

  ‘But what if you don’t need a test?’

  ‘No man can be sure of his courage until he has been tested. Everyone requires a test.’

  ‘What I meant was—what if it has been tested?’

  ‘Son,’ Holt said expansively, ‘I don’t mean soccer … or climbing some hill.’

  Yigal rose and said, ‘I’m going to take a leak.’

  When he was gone, Cato said, ‘Mr. Holt, you ever hear of Qarash?’

  Holt thought a minute, repeated the name twice and asked, ‘Wasn’t that in the Six-Day War?’

  ‘It was.’ There was silence around the table, and after a long while Holt asked, ‘You mean …’ He pointed toward the toilet, and Cato nodded.

  ‘He was seventeen,’ Monica said, ‘and
he wasn’t even in the army. Just went along for the hell of it.’

  ‘You read about it,’ Cato added. ‘Surrounded by six tanks and they destroyed four of them.’

  ‘That little jerk?’ Holt asked, and Cato replied, ‘That’s what Nasser said.’

  When Yigal returned, Holt stood up out of deference and there was a moment of embarrassment, for he could think of nothing to say, but then he remembered some of the details about Qarash and asked, ‘Did you happen to be the guy who worked on the radio?’ When Yigal nodded, Holt grew expansive and said, ‘You must know a lot about electronics,’ and we left them at the table, discussing Big Rallies and tape recorders.

  On July 9 we were wakened at five-thirty by the sweet sound of oboes playing folk tunes that reached far back into the history of this region. As I heard them coming slowly down the street, three countrymen with small drums and those delightful pipes, I hoped that the big bands would be late in arriving, for we did not often hear the oboes at Bar Vasca, but soon I heard in the distance a horrible concentration of sound, two bands converging on our plaza, each playing its own tune to its own rhythm, and the soft echo of the oboes was lost.

  At six-fifteen I led the way to the barricades where the bulls leave city hall plaza to enter Estafeta, and as we climbed into position so that we could see both the area we had studied yesterday and the long reach of Estafeta, we could appreciate the dramatic significance of this spot, because if you ran at town hall, you had a limited distance to worry about, with plenty of fences under which you could duck in emergency. But if you elected to run in Estafeta, you faced a street of considerable length, extremely narrow, uphill all the way, and with never a fence to aid you. When the bulls overtook you, as they must, all you could do was either press yourself against the wall or throw yourself into the gutter and hope.

  ‘You mean those men are going to run in there?’ Britta asked. When I nodded, she asked, ‘Is this where Mr. Holt runs?’ and I said, ‘He runs elsewhere.’

  When we had our places atop the fence, our legs hooked around posts so that we would not be pushed into the street by the crowd that was forming behind us, I told the young people, ‘There are two things to watch for. The first is very exciting. The second may surprise you. But when the bulls reach the end of Doña Blanca de Navarra—right here—they must turn very quickly to get into Estafeta. Some may fall down … right at our feet.’

  ‘That would be exciting,’ Monica said.

  ‘The exciting part is when they get up. If they can see the other bulls heading down Estafeta, they run like mad to catch up and there’s no danger. But if, when they fall, they become disoriented and can’t see the others in Estafeta, watch out.’

  ‘What’s the second thing?’ Yigal asked.

  ‘When the first rocket sounds, you’ll see that mass of men there at town hall break through the police lines and start to run this way. One or two in the group will suddenly realize, “My God! I’m down here where the bulls are going to be!” And they’ll try to escape by climbing through the barricades we’re sitting on. Watch what happens.’

  At seven the first rocket exploded, but the second did not come quickly. ‘Some bull has lagged behind,’ I called. There was a count of almost thirty before the second rocket sounded.

  We waited, and then the crowd of runners surged down upon us, turning into Estafeta so that they could be well down that dangerous street before the bulls came, but as they ran I noticed one fair-haired boy of nineteen or twenty with real panic in his face. He had wanted to run, or he would not have been there. He had even got into the street. But now his courage quite left him, and when he reached the barricade from which Britta’s feet dangled, he dove for it and tried to climb to safety, but as he did so a policeman stationed at that point pushed him in the face, throwing him back into the street.

  Confused, the boy turned back toward town hall, where the first bulls had already appeared, and they terrified him. Like a wild man he dived for the barricade again, but again the policeman shoved him in the face, shouting in Spanish, ‘You wanted to run, run.’

  The boy looked up at Britta, at me, at the obdurate policeman. Britta screamed in Norwegian, ‘Come this way,’ but the policeman intervened. In sheer terror the young man dived for the street and lay huddled on the pavement as the first bulls thundered past, ignoring him. He rose, shaken and unable to speak, when a knowing Spaniard, aware that because of the late start there were still bulls to come, knocked him flat and kept him pressed against the wall as the late bulls arrived.

  One slipped and fell, almost on top of the bewildered young man, kicking him twice as his hooves scrambled to regain a footing. Once back on its feet, the irritated bull saw his mates far down Estafeta and set off in pursuit, causing harm to no one.

  The young man stayed in the gutter until Britta and I reached him. He was Swedish and kept saying over and over, ‘Why did the policeman do that?’—as if the implacable policeman had been more frightening than the thousand-pound bull that had been lying on him.

  One of the most enjoyable parts of the day came when the running of the bulls was finished, for then we would convene at Bar Vasca under the wine casks in the alcove that was reserved for us. There, confined by walls on three sides and the low ceiling above, we would find refuge in our private world and talk of what we had just seen. The ceramic tile in our alcove read:

  How Sweet It Is to Do Nothing All Day Long

  And After Having Done So,

  To Rest.

  The young people usually got to the alcove first, and after a while Holt would join us, and the girls would ask, ‘And how was your run today, Mr. Holt?’ and he would reply with that unequaled Spanish word of contempt, ‘Regular,’ with a long-drawn accent on the last syllable. To the initiated, this was the ultimate condemnation: ‘Stinking … as usual.’

  But Britta, who spoke good Spanish, noted that whenever a real old-timer entered the bar he stopped by their table and spoke to Holt in respectful terms: ‘That was a great run today, Americano,’ or ‘This day the bulls had horns, verdad?’ Twice she asked Holt further questions about his running and each time he brushed them off. Today, after having listened to the third repetition of the epic about the Swedish youth who had been pushed back into Estafeta just as the bulls were bearing down on him, Holt nodded, said nothing, and walked away. A woodchopper, who had been passing time with Raquel, left the bar and said to our table, ‘That one knows!’ and he nodded approvingly toward the disappearing figure.

  ‘What does he know?’ Britta asked.

  Before I could answer, Joe asked, ‘He run at any of the places we’ve seen?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tell us about him,’ Gretchen said.

  Including their interruptions and my repetitions, this is more or less what I told them: ‘There are three ways to run the bulls at Pamplona, and you’ve seen them all. Doña Blanca in the open, Estafeta down the canyon, Teléfonos into the chute.’

  ‘You ever run in Estafeta?’ Joe asked.

  ‘Once, and like everyone else who has done so, when I’m in a bar in Amsterdam or Montevideo and someone mentions Pamplona, I let them throw their weight around, then casually say, “I always run in Estafeta,” and the conversation halts.’

  ‘I like that,’ Yigal said. ‘You ran once long ago, but when you speak of it you say, “I always run in Estafeta.” ’

  I laughed and said, ‘You’ve learned the first rule of Pamplona.’

  ‘Why aren’t more people hurt?’ Joe pressed.

  ‘You ever see the famous photographs of pile-ups at Teléfonos? One man falls, then another, then a hundred. They form a small mountain in the darkness under where we were standing, and if the bulls smashed into them with horns down, there’d be a lot of deaths. But the bulls have this incredible instinct to forge ahead—to keep up with their mates. So they climb right over the men without stopping to gore anyone. This urge to stay with the gang is what makes Pamplona possible.’

  ‘I suppo
se that goes for the people, too,’ Gretchen said.

  ‘But sometimes people must get killed,’ Britta said. ‘This morning … that Swedish boy could easily have been gored.’

  ‘When you come to Pamplona you miss half the excitement if you doubt the rumors. “Three men were killed yesterday, but the Spanish press hushes it up because the government doesn’t want bad publicity.” ’

  ‘But two men were killed yesterday,’ Monica protested. ‘I heard it at the bar.’

  ‘In every bar men are killed. Strangers solemnly swear that last year eleven runners were wiped out. “But did you read about it in the papers? I’ll bet you didn’t. The Spanish government isn’t dumb.” These strangers never see the deaths themselves, but they always know someone who did. “My friend was standing right in Estafeta when this big red bull went crazy and gored three men in the chest. They died before they reached the hospital!” It is always a close friend who saw the deadly events.’

  ‘How many are actually killed?’ Cato asked.

  I looked about the alcove and invited guesses. Gretchen said, ‘What kind of number are we looking for? Hundreds, thousands?’

  No one spoke, so I gave them the answer: ‘In the last forty years, seven. And always accidents no one could possibly have prevented. In his rush from the corrals to the arena each bull has a chance to gore a thousand targets, but for some inexplicable reason he ignores them, until suddenly, without logic, he drives his horn into some unsuspecting man. If the bulls were so minded, they could kill seventy men every year. They’ve killed seven.’

  ‘How about the accidents?’ Cato asked.

  ‘That’s something else. Every morning six or eight young men are dragged into the hospital with accidents … more or less serious. Some are real gorings, and if Pamplona didn’t have sharp doctors, some of these kids would probably die. And if Dr. Fleming hadn’t invented penicillin, there would be amputations. But as a matter of fact, even on bad mornings when eleven or twelve are rushed to the operating tables, all of them recover. Some have missing front teeth. Some go out with limps. And a few, like Harvey Holt, wind up with a set of four scars.